Whatever anyone sees as "minor PP" is very subjective, I agree. As RaptorUK says, various things would be required for images shot in RAW or TIFF, and usually any author tends to either keep as much of original look as possible, insofar as, say, conversion to JPEG will retain... or try to make a picture more "lookable", which is yet another undefinable term.

But whatever is being done, the traces should not show, and the image should appear "as shot". Except in cases where another expression is intended, of course.

I use "minor PP interventions" rule with intention to differentiate the expected entries from overly (visibly) modified ones in the challenge themes where the readability of the image contents is primary. I'll remove that rule in those challenges where I expect some creative approach rather than the documentary, and in such cases the entry's theme is usually also the free choice of the entrant.

According the discussion we have here, maybe your own wording "no noticeable PP" would cause less confusion than "minor PP":

Good idea to adapt the PP rule according the spirit of the challenge.

In fact, and reflecting the variability of the original the photographer starts with / from, we can never really know whether any picture has been shot as RAW, JPEG or something else... What we see is what we've got, so it is entirely up to the host to accept or reject the entry...

About the light quality at various places: I recall having had serious problems with some pictures shot (on slidefilm) in Egypt, and in some other places where there was much sand of the certain kind. It was reflecting the light in such way that some light frequencies simply appeared more prominent than the other. The Skylight B filter solved it in the end, but the results looked a lot like the original image above. The effect of the Skylight made the subsequent images look more like the L'objectif's version.

Similarly, once I shot a church interior on assignment. I wondered later, how was it possible to perfectly light up the entire nave of the church using just one flash at half power... Then I learned that the church walls have been stuccoed with material containing a large percentage of chrushed shells. The microscopic reflections were unbelievable, almost full two f-stops. Thishas been a valuable experience.

Interesting experience. Learning from mistakes in the slide film years was very hard. For several years I noted down shutter speed, aperture value and also sometimes the light conditions to learn from mistakes.

So, to me the original image here looks kind of normal, and not visibly PP'd. But that's just my opinion.

I think this is a great image and I can imagine the atmosphere when it was taken. But for my taste the fade look is a bit too strong to say PP is not noticeable.

Now this shows that there will be no perfect PP rule. Maybe some more tolerance regarding DQ could solve the problem.

BTW: According OP (anwer to the version of l_objectiv) the look of the image was due to PP:

" ... Thank you. Very interesting. I actually have a fairly similar copy of the image but preferred the more faded look for how I remembered the scene ..."

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Fil

Chris

Although I'm still confused as ever on challenges and PP, I find the discussion pretty interesting. I think the allowing more PP tolerence regarding DQ idea make sense. This allows indavidual voters to judge what has too much PP for their particular taste and score accordingly.

On a side note.... As a member of quite a few photography communities I find dpreview particularly sensitive on the issue.